Celia dressed, drank a cup of coffee standing up at the window, and then made her way to the subway. Her head throbbed. She could have done without the shots.
High Street station felt like a brick oven. She was already beginning to sweat through her linen top.
The A train came quickly, as it always did at rush hour. Celia stepped into the crowded car and sucked in the burst of air-conditioning. She closed her eyes as the train screeched to its next stop. Outwardly she was a very peaceful person. But the rage she felt daily on the New York City subway hinted at the possibility that the only difference between her and those raving-mad homeless people in the car was that she knew enough to keep quiet. All types of train behavior bugged her, and she liked to fling silent insults at passengers accordingly.
To the sleazoids who unabashedly stared at her breasts: You’re sweeping me off my feet here. Wanna get off the train and screw?
To the Wall Street douche bags in pinstripes who sat down and then hid behind their copies of the Financial Times, so as not to see the standing pregnant women and old ladies with canes and young assistants teetering in stilettos: Attention, passengers! Is every able-bodied man sitting comfortably? Well thank fuck for that.
Today she had managed to get a seat on her own, leaving her relatively unannoyed. Celia watched a very Brooklyn mother (long straight hair with bits of gray mixed in, toned calves and arms, Birkenstocks) trying to negotiate with her two-year-old, coaxing him to sit down as he writhed about, nearly knocking out his teeth on the metal arm rail.
“How can I help you, Luca?” his mother kept saying in a loud, breathy voice.
How can I help you, as if she were his waitress at T.G.I. Friday’s instead of his goddamn parent. This was one of a million reasons why Celia would never raise children in the city: parenthood as performance art. She wanted to reserve the right to tell little Luca to sit his butt down if he ever cared to see the Teletubbies again, without the fear that twenty-nine strangers might call Child Protective Services.
The train rolled past Thirty-fourth Street, where tourist families with fanny packs and matching smiles piled into the car. Their blond children held on to the poles, swaying this way and that, thrilled by every jolt and bump of the train. Celia thought for a moment of how strange it felt to simply live—to work, and go to the gym, and buy groceries, and wait for trains—in a place where so many people were visiting and in awe of their surroundings.
She got off at Forty-second Street, smiling at a pair of twins in a double stroller boarding the train with an older black woman, probably the nanny.
Most people who lived in New York hated Times Square, but she loved watching strangers discover the bright lights and larger-than-life everything. It gave her a little thrill to see them having the time of their lives while she was just trying to get to her desk before ten.
Celia made her way through the crowds on Eighth Avenue. Her heels were killing her. She wished she had thought to bring flip-flops.
She was twenty minutes late. Inside her building, the air-conditioning roared. She walked past the security desk, saying good morning to the guards, and then pressed the elevator button repeatedly.
The doors opened, and she rode up to the seventeenth floor, praying that her boss had remembered his nine o’clock eye doctor’s appointment and was still reading the National Review in a waiting room somewhere uptown. (Hail Mary, full of grace …) He had warned her about being late too often, even though he himself regularly rolled in after lunch.
She poked her head into his office. The lights were still off. She breathed a sigh of relief, and went to her cubicle.
Kayla hadn’t arrived yet. Her desk was covered in little swatches of lace—Veil possibilities!
Celia rolled her eyes at the sight of them.
Her phone was already ringing, and she picked it up in a rush.
“Celia Donnelly,” she said.
At the other end of the line, Bree struggled to get words out.
Celia’s stomach flipped. Bree’s mother had died; she was sure of it.
“Honey,” she said weakly. “What’s wrong? Is it—”
“I called you twenty times last night,” Bree snapped. “Why don’t you ever pick up your goddamn cell phone?”
“I’m so sorry,” Celia said. “My battery died.”
In truth, she had seen Bree’s calls come in and ignored them. She was out at a noisy bar and figured she could call back later. Now, thinking clearly, she realized how selfish that had been. But Bree had told her that her mother was fine. The surgery had gone well, and Bree was supposed to have flown home to California the night before.
“Is it your mom?” Celia whispered.
“No.” Bree gulped. “Lara left me.”
“What do you mean, she left you?”
“I mean she’s gone. All her stuff is gone. She took the sheets off the bed and everything. Her toothbrush. All of it.”
Bree had told Celia a few days earlier that they had been fighting and that Lara was ignoring her calls. Celia thought it was selfish of Lara considering the situation with Bree’s mom, but she had never imagined this.
“Did she leave a note?” she asked.
“No,” Bree said. “She left a check for this next month’s rent and that’s it.”
“Jesus,” Celia said. “Well, have you called any of her friends?”
“Her stupid schmuckie work friend Jasmine, who, by the way, is totally in love with her, told me she’s safe and happy but just can’t be near me right now. Can you imagine? My mother could have died and I’d have no way of telling her.”
“Oh, baby,” Celia said.
“I can’t handle this,” Bree said. “First my mother and now Lara. I called work this morning. I told them I’m taking three more weeks off.”
“Can you do that?” Celia asked.
“No, but I’ve worked my ass off for that firm, and I deserve it. Plus, I told them it’s for my mother. They think I’m still in Savannah.”
“Isn’t that bad luck?” Celia said. She would never dream of telling a lie that involved the health of a loved one. In her mind that was just asking for tragedy, begging for it, in fact.
“I love my mother, but right now I’m so mad at my parents I could scream,” Bree said. “They’re the reason I’m in this position in the first place.”
“Well, what if someone from work sees you?” Celia asked.
“I’m not planning on staying around here,” Bree said. “Would you mind if I came and stayed with you?”
“Of course not,” Celia said.
She adored having her own space in her small two-room apartment in Brooklyn Heights. The thought of sharing it with almost anyone horrified her. But Bree was different. She could move right in with her insanely huge shoe collection, and Celia would be happy to have her, luggage and all.
“But you hate New York and it’s two hundred degrees here right now,” Celia said.
“Yeah, but I need to see you. Oh, Celia. Why the hell did I treat her so badly?”
Celia paused, unsure what to say. She had always thought that if they ever broke up it would be because Bree had finally caved to her parents, or met some guy. She never pictured it this way, with Lara leaving Bree and breaking her heart.
“Just get here,” Celia said. “We’ll figure it all out.”
Bree arrived the following afternoon.
They ate an early dinner at a tiny Italian place on Cranberry Street and drank a bottle of red wine. Afterward, they got into Celia’s bed and talked.
“I know you’re not her biggest fan, but I should call Sally,” Celia said after a while. “I think this whole pregnancy thing has her really scared. I’ve been meaning to go visit her up in Boston, and she’s called me a few times recently, but I haven’t called back. Suddenly I’m having major Catholic guilt about screening phone calls.”
“Didn’t I tell you? We made up,” Bree said.
The day they flew home from Sally’s wedding, Celia
called Bree and said, “Wow, that was kind of a disaster. Let’s analyze it to death.” They laughed. Celia said she felt terrible for adding that sour note to the occasion, and Bree said she hoped Sally choked on a piece of leftover wedding cake.
Celia had been overcome with guilt, and at her mother’s suggestion, she had written long letters to Sally and to April, asking for forgiveness, saying that she loved them more than anything in the world. Bree had chastised her for making amends with April and Sally, but Celia knew that eventually they would all come back to one another in their own ways. And in the meantime, she got to hear each of them trash the others.
“Should I tell her you say hi?” Celia asked now.
“Of course,” Bree said.
Celia smirked. “I knew you two would get back together eventually.”
“She’s a judgmental little weirdo sometimes, but she’s my judgmental little weirdo,” Bree said. “Sally was right about me and Lara, wasn’t she?”
Celia started to respond, but stopped herself. It seemed too late to say that, more and more lately, she had been remembering how in love they were in college, and thinking that Lara was good for Bree, that she still loved her, and maybe Bree just needed to take that leap.
“She wasn’t right about that, but I think we need to love her anyway,” Celia said finally.
Sally picked up on the first ring.
“How are you feeling, babe?” Celia asked, without saying hello.
“Awful,” Sally moaned. “I can’t stop throwing up. Everything hurts. Even my gums and my eyes are sore. I had to stop wearing my contacts and put on my hideous glasses from college. I look like a fat Harry Potter. And I’m peeing like every five seconds.”
“Is that normal?” Celia said.
“I guess so. The doctor says it’s all just part of pregnancy,” Sally said. “Have you heard from April recently? I’ve been calling her for weeks. She doesn’t even know about the baby.”
Celia thought about this. It had been months since they had spoken.
“I only talked to her once, in the spring sometime,” Celia said. “It’s weird. I get the impression that freaker Ronnie doesn’t really let her talk on the phone.”
They talked about Celia’s job and dates and Sally’s new kitchen furniture, and Celia thought of how vastly different their lives had become. Sally and Jake had built a goddamn deck the previous fall, while Celia pondered whether or not to waste money on a new dish rack after finding mold all over the bottom of her old one.
Finally, Celia said, “I have a mystery guest here who wants to say hi.”
Bree took the phone from Celia. “Sal?” she said. “It’s me.”
· · ·
That night, before they fell asleep, Celia whispered to Bree, “We need another reunion. Just the four of us.”
Bree yawned. “I’m game,” she said. “I guess we can’t stay mad forever. We’re Smithies, after all, and Smith is thicker than water.”
Celia snorted. “That is so dorky,” she said.
“I should e-mail April,” Bree said. “I guess I could have been more supportive about that crazy project of hers.”
Celia laughed. “That doesn’t sound very supportive.”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” Bree said. “How is she anyway?”
“I honestly get nervous that she’s going to crack,” Celia said. “She’s just around all this awful stuff all the time now. Pimps and prostitutes and God knows what. I really don’t understand why she has to live among these people to make a film, you know?”
“I know,” Bree said.
Changing the subject, Celia said, “Are you friends with anyone in California who just wants to get married and then sort of drop out of life?”
“What do you mean?” Bree said. “Like move to a commune or something?”
Celia laughed. “Uhh, no. Like quit their jobs and just be married.”
Bree paused for a moment, thinking this over. “I went to high school with tons of girls like that,” she said. “But everyone I know in California is a lawyer or a lesbian. Neither one of those groups tends toward the stay-at-home-mom thing. I remember the night I first met you at Smith, and you told me what your mom does. You sounded so proud of her. I wanted my kids to talk about me like that someday.”
A phone vibrated for a moment on the dresser, a text message coming in. Bree sprung up, probably because she expected it to be Lara.
She sounded crestfallen. “It was your phone,” she said.
Bree handed it to Celia. The message was from Daryl, her vanishing hookup from two nights before. Celia had already forgotten about him, which of course was why he had gotten in touch. If she had spent forty-eight hours thinking of him, she never would have heard from him again. That was just how these things went.
She read it: Sorry for running out. I had an early meeting. Thanks for the sleepover. I’d love to have dinner with you next weekend—slumber party optional.
“Who’s it from?” Bree said sleepily, crawling back under the covers.
“Just my sister,” Celia said. “She got a new pair of shoes. Pretty gripping, huh?”
“Riveting,” Bree said. “Thank you for taking me in, lover.”
“Anytime.”
After Celia lay down, Bree whispered, “Can you believe Sal’s pregnant?”
“It’s kind of crazy, right?” Celia said. “She’s really freaking out. When I told my mother that the doctor told Sally she was three months along, my mom said a woman only finds out about her own pregnancy that late in the game if she’s in major denial.”
“I don’t blame her,” Bree said. “Hey, do you remember what April said to us at graduation, right after we went up to get our diplomas?”
Celia smiled into the darkness. “Of course. She leaned over and said, ‘Congratulations. You can officially never get pregnant in college.’”
APRIL
The little house Ronnie rented for them was teeming with roaches the size of tea saucers. Ronnie called them water bugs, but April had seen enough roaches in her life to know what they looked like. Usually, bugs and mice didn’t bother her. But Georgia roaches were bold. They perched on her coffee mug and didn’t scamper away when she lifted it to her lips. They climbed right into the sheets, so that she might wake up to the sound and feeling of one of them inching across her leg—when she swatted at it, it just stayed put for a minute, taunting her, then flew up toward the ceiling.
April thought it strange that Bree had never mentioned such a thing when she talked about Savannah, since surely this would be enough to make her throw herself from a rooftop. But then again, she would wager that Bree had never seen this side of Georgia. April had decided there were two Georgias. The polite, peach-eating Georgia, and the bigoted, misogynistic, revolting Georgia. Their place was right smack in the middle of the latter.
Ronnie said it was crucial to the whole project that they live on English Avenue, in a neighborhood called the Bluff, where lots of the girls and their pimps lived. As white women, they already stood out, and they couldn’t risk raising any more suspicion. Luckily, Ronnie’s friend Alexa lived in the neighborhood and knew about their plan. She was a sometimes prostitute who had left her pimp but still worked the streets now and then. (April had no idea how these two women had met, but anyway.) Alexa introduced them to some people. Their story was that Ronnie had been in the life since she was twelve, and that April (her daughter) had followed in her footsteps. Since this was a fairly common tale, everyone seemed to believe them. They spent a year just trying to blend in—Ronnie made April cut off her dreads and grow her hair into a ridiculous bob that made her feel like a spy in a James Bond movie. She had to stop wearing the faded corduroys and slogan T-shirts that Ronnie called “your hipster uniform.” Instead, April wore tight, low-cut shirts and dresses for the first time in her life, and tried not to think about how much she missed her familiar flannel. She hung out with the girls on the corner, knowing all the pimps by name but pretending that s
he chose to work alone. She even stood beside them on Metropolitan Parkway, driving off in cars with men Ronnie had hired so the girls would believe she was working. This was the sort of information that Ronnie had forbidden her from sharing with the Smithies, because she knew how much they would disapprove.
The neighborhood was dangerous, and Ronnie kept a handgun in her nightstand for protection. She told April that if any of the pimps ever tried to mess with her or break into the house, she should shoot without hesitation. April wondered silently how she might manage to get to Ronnie’s room before the guy shot her first, but that was another story.
It was much harder living with Ronnie this way than April had imagined. In Chicago, their place was huge, and they stayed out of each other’s way when they wanted to. But here, the quarters were much too close—they fought, bickered, got bored, and drank too much. Ronnie had grown more watchful than ever. She took April’s cell phone away. She followed her around the house, and at times April could feel someone watching her as she moved along the sidewalk—when she turned around, Ronnie would be there, trailing her unapologetically.
Ronnie’s doubts about April’s loyalty had never been so intense. This annoyed April because here she was, willing to risk everything for a project that Ronnie had claimed they would have equal say in, a project that April herself believed in with all her heart, and yet Ronnie still acted as though she couldn’t completely trust April.
April had told Ronnie time and again that she understood why she couldn’t tell the girls. Besides, she hadn’t even spoken to Sally or Bree in more than a year. In part, she knew, she was doing all of this to prove something to them—that her mission with Ronnie was crucial, a matter of life and death. When the time came, they would know what she had done and why.
Ronnie and April kept mostly to themselves, though occasionally April would walk to the market at the end of the block and talk to the girls working the street—or the track, as they called it—out front. They stayed there almost all day and all night, vanishing only between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m. They dressed in short shorts and strappy tops and heels. Businessmen would pull up in cars without looking at all ashamed, and the girls would get in and go off to God knows where. Sometimes cabs full of tourists in town for a basketball game or a bachelor party would swing by—the girls told her how cabdrivers took kickbacks from pimps to bring guys over to this side of town.
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